Sarawak minister Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah has lambasted PAS president Abdul Hadi Awang for saying Malaysians who prefer English to Bahasa Malaysia are trapped in a colonial mindset.
“It’s unfortunate for PAS to have a leader with such a shallow mindset.
“Being good in English doesn’t mean someone has a colonial mindset. Arabic is not the language of our region. Does learning Arabic mean we have a colonial mindset? No,” said Abdul Karim, who is a vice-president of the ruling Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB), according to a report by Free Malaysia Today.
The Sarawak tourism minister advised Hadi not to be a katak bawah tempurung in reference to the Malay proverb of a frog that lives under a coconut shell and thinks that the space it occupies is the entirety of the world.
Abdul Karim said Islam advocates the acquiring of knowledge and that being proficient in more languages was an advantage.
Yesterday, Marang MP Hadi said those who favoured English were "souls who are still trapped with the former colonists who previously enslaved them”.
"Advertisements in shops and the market, as well as the names of cities and roads, are named in English even though a majority of its target audiences do not know English.
"At the same time, they do not care about whether their audience consists of Malaysians who do not know English," he had reportedly said.
Both PBB and PAS are represented in the cabinet of Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob.
Abdul Karim recalled that Hadi's remarks were not a surprise as he had previously made unsavoury comments about Dayaks in 2009 when he said only loincloth-wearing Dayaks voted for BN. - Mkini
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